Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I do not know whether I will get
any more cheers.

This has been a remarkable debate which has reflected the views
of a very divided public, some of whoma
minorityare undoubtedly in favour of war. A majority
want to avoid that situation. I remember as a young child,
growing up in 1938when I was nine or 10; I cannot
rememberwhen people taking to the streets would have
enormously favoured Neville Chamberlain. Barely a year later,
however, when we went to war, the situation changed. I am not
arguing that that situation is parallel in any way. It is a
matter that the Government have to face, but it is not
absolutely critical. Come a war, I think that people will
rally round and say that the war is just. However, that is
not my argument today.

I think that the Government, on the whole, are rather benign.
They have taken a view that Saddam Hussein had 12 years in
which to disarm. I do not think that that is strictly true.
The pressure to accomplish change has not been consistently
applied until now. There has been more than an element of
ambiguity over the period. It took the events of 11th
September to produce a riposte to Saddam, although there was
no clear evidence that he was responsible for those terrible
events. There is no unequivocal evidence that Al'Qaeda
and he were united in their aspirations. However, both of
them represent threats, albeit different threats, to the
world community.

There are some who entertain the notion that we canindeed,
shoulddo little or nothing. I think that that view is
wholly wrong. Others take the view that there is no
alternative but to go to war, and the sooner, the better. I
think that that view, which amounts to the United Nations
being a sideshow, is also wrong. In my view, the way forward
lies somewhere between those extremes.

Now is not the time to be swayed by semantics. The fact that,
some weeks ago, the United Nations Security Council
determined on a resolution is highly significant. However,
situations change. The question we have to ask ourselves now
is whether there has been a significant change in the past
few weeks. I understand that, only tonight, Dr Blix said that
Saddam Hussein has not made the advances that are needed. I
think that that is a highly relevant piece of evidence.

I am not persuaded by the antics, or perhaps they may be called
the tactics, of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroider. I
believe that theirs is a recipe for

26 Feb 2003 : Column 338

inaction. Their
counter-resolution involves little that can be unacceptable
to Saddam Hussein in maintaining the status quo. His
disinclination to disarm is not just a matter for him; it
affects us all. While he is not the only tyrant in the world
today, he has slain innumerable people. He has shown nothing
but contempt for the United Nations and, for that matter,
most of his own people.

So how long should we give him? What should we be demanding of
him? I believe that even at this late hour there is an
acceptable and legitimate halfway house: allow the inspectors
some further leeway; give them a further opportunity to
search. But it has to be a final ultimatum as well. Saddam
Hussein must be under no illusion that he has to identify the
weapons of mass destruction and other noxious weapons which
are under his control. We must allow the inspectors a
limited, but a reasonable time. I would make it abundantly
clear that Saddam Hussein must co-operate fully with them;
otherwise he will reap a whirlwind.

I hope against hope that many innocent civilians in Iraq will not
be cut down. Already time is short for the preferred United
States option. I believe that that is their clear policy.
There is an alternative and we should go down that route.

It is incumbent on us to declare our war aims unequivocally. We
have to do that and I make no bones about it. What are they?
What about the refugees? What about the rehabilitation of
Iraq and its people after the war? There is a duty to answer
all these questions. I believe that is what the British
people want.

I conclude by declaring my interest as the President of BALPA,
the British Airline Pilots Association. In the event of an
armed conflict there will be effects on the aviation
industry. The International Air Transport Association, which
represents 280 airlines, has calculated a 20 per cent slump
in passenger numbers if war proceeds. What have we to say to
them? Inevitably, there will be a number of redundancies. It
may be that civil aircraft will be commandeered to assist in
the carrying of personnel and in medical evacuation. In that
situation the livery of such civil aviation companies and
their national identity may well be removed.

I pose the following questions to the Minister for response,
either tonight or in the near future in writing. Will the
Ministry of Defence be responsible for the cost of work
undertaken on aircraft in this situation? What enhanced
security measures will be taken at airports for those on
civil aircraft? What further support will be forthcoming as
far as insurance cover is concerned? My noble friend may not
be able to reply to my specific questions but on the wider
issue, the arguments are many and complex. I only hope that
the solution to which I have pointed will be of some value.

9.40 p.m.

Lord Elton: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, I
rise to speak on an entirely uncontroversial note. I assure
the noble Lord that he was 10 years old for the last 25 days
of 1928which puts him 15 months ahead of me. We
therefore shared a childhood

26 Feb 2003 : Column 339

in the gathering shadows of the
Second World War. The speech by the noble Lord, Lord
Dahrendorf, struck a strong chord with me because I saw with
my youthful eyes the terrible price paid for indecision
before a major war.

We are asked whether there is sufficient evidence on which to
conduct a war under Resolution 1441. I believe that there is
sufficient evidence. Dr Blix's update of 22nd January
points to 6,500 chemical bombs with a payload of 1,000 tonnes
of chemical agent missing; 8,500 litres of biological agent
unaccounted for; and 650 kilograms of bacterial growth
mediaenough to produce 5,000 litres of concentrated
anthraxalso unaccounted for. The gun may not be
smoking but it is obviously there.

Bush junior refers from time to time to Bush senior, who
obviously has much influenced him. I too had a
fatheronce a Member of your Lordships'
Housewith experience of the Gulf or thereabouts. He
was part of the British Expeditionary Force that came to a
stop at Kut-el- Amara in Mesopotamia and was among the
handful of survivors of both the siege and the horrific
1,000-mile march into captivity. It is not a theatre of war
to which we should lightly commit our children.

Bush senior prosecuted a just and successful war that was,
without question, legal under a United Nations mandate. Bush
junior proposes to conduct a war that, according to the right
reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, is not quite
justand which, according to a mass of public opinion
and not only in this country, is not quite legal under the
United Nations. I do not think that it matters absolutely in
the last resort whether it could be proved in a court of law
that Resolution 1441 would countenance this war, as I believe
it would; what matters is what the world thinks.

We live now in an undivided world in which everybody has an
opinion. Thanks to television and other communications media,
everybody has good information on which to base their
opinions. Opinion is hardening against the idea that
Resolution 1441 alone is sufficient justification. However, I
think that if push came to shove, it would be.

It is at this pointwhen I am longing to go, thanks to the
encouragement given by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, and
convinced of the tremendous advantages of immediate action,
thanks to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, that
I pause to think. It seems to me that we are not in a
position so to proceed, for lack of proper planning. I am
talking not of military planningalthough it was
interesting to hear the military comments on the political
planning, because soldiers have to think what will happen
next because their skins depend on it. Like other retired
commanders before him, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord
Bramall, asked what is to happen next.

The political preparation is insufficient because we do not have
a united alliance; we have a terrible division between us and
Europe. I shall not go into the detail of that. Those who
shout "Oil" at the Americans should remember that they
have to shout "Oil" at the French and Russians too,
because they have an interest in preserving the status quo
from an economic point of

26 Feb 2003 : Column 340

view, just as the Americans may
have one for changing it. All that I observe is that there is
no unity of political will on the part of those intending to
prosecute the war.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that it was incumbent on the
West to do something. That shows the terrible failure of
planning, because the war ought not to be West versus Middle
East any more than it ought to be Christian versus Muslim,
Europe against sub-Asia, or whatever. It ought to be a war
between law and justice, as evinced by the operation of the
Security Council of the United Nations, against lawbreakers.
The case for that has not yet been built.

More serious still is what happens at the end of the war. The
Gulf War was conducted under a mandate that expired as the
last Iraqi crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border. That did not pose
a problem at the time, because there was only the question of
the Kuwaiti Government being reinstalled. However, it has
left us a huge problem for now, because it left the Iraqi
machine more or less intact. The present mandate expires when
the troops reach Baghdad and are in the position to enforce
disarmamentbut who rules then?

Will the spoils simply go to the conqueror? Will there be
repetition of British gunboat diplomacy, or the great game in
Afghanistan? I do not like to mention Afghanistan, because we
claimed that we were going to start nation-building there. As
my noble and learned friend Lord Howe said, we have not
succeeded very well in that. However, we have not even
started to plan nation-building in Iraq. Therefore, if time
is needed, it is not needed to put the finishing touches to
Resolution 1441 or for a new resolution that makes it
absolutely clear that we are able to go in; it is needed for
a resolution that states the terms under which we shall come
out and what we shall leave behind us.

Will it be spoils for the victor, or justice for the poor and the
oppressed? We keep praying them in aid of our liberating
efforts in Iraq, but have done nothing to plan for them. It
is a keynote of the Christian religionof the teaching
of our Lordthat we should tend first to the poor and
the weak. I think that that is the true Islamic message as
well. There could be international co-operation in this
respect to build a settled Middle East for the future,
provided that we settle the problem in Palestine and Israel
as well. I have had eight minutes, so I shall say only that
the solution to that is essential to a final settlement in
Iraq. Until we know what we shall finish up doing, we should
not start doing it.

9.49 p.m.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, I want to touch on
an issue that the national and international debate has been
remarkably silent on, which is the environmental consequence
of war. I will approach it from two angles: first, that we
should be aware of the environmental dimension; and,
secondly, that if we need to prepare military
plansbeing prepared they certainly arewe should
do so with environmental consequences in mind.

26 Feb 2003 : Column 341

The Geneva Convention was amended in 1977 when it became apparent
that it was not able to cope with environmental issues.
Perhaps noble Lords would be happy to be reminded of how it
was amended. Article 55 states:

"Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural
environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage.
This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods
or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to
cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to
prejudice the health or survival of the population".

It also states:

"Attacks against the natural environment by way of
reprisals are prohibited".

I am sure that the Government intend that we shall abide in any
military action by that section of the Geneva Convention, as
much as we intend to abide by all the others. Those who do
not abide by it have been illustrated this evening. We were
reminded of Saddam Hussein's actions, which the world
saw graphically illustrated in pictures from the Gulf War of
burning oil wells, which had been set alight by Saddam
Hussein. They were clearly visible even from space and
spilled some 10 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf,
resulting in irrevocable ecological damage and thousands of
oiled birds in the sea.

Perhaps not so visible, but also passionately referred to by my
noble friend Lady Nicholson, was the act of ecological
vandalism and, in her opinion, genocide in the draining of
the marshes.

In the international context of agreements, there was in 1992 the
Rio declaration on the environment and development, of which
Britain is a signatory. It stated in Principle 24:

"Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable
development. States shall therefore respect international law
providing protection for the environment in times of armed
conflict and co-operate in its further development, as
necessary".

That was designed explicitly to protect the environment during
war conflicts, and was adopted at the 47th session of the
United Nations. It is a sad fact that there is a new term in
the vocabulary of warecocide. It means the deliberate
and conscious causation of environmental damage to achieve
war aims. Recent history is full of examples of both ecocide
and damage caused by war that has had catastrophic unplanned
environmental consequences. An example of the first ecocide
would be defoliant use in Vietnam, and the second example
would be the bombing in Yugoslavia, which resulted in the
Danube basin pollution.

Awareness of the scale of damage that war was causing to the
environment prompted the United Nations to set up the first
study that it ever undertook to assess the consequences of
such environmental damage and the suffering that it caused.

Traditionally, humanitarian aid has meant feeding and shelter,
but it became obvious from the UN study that the eradication
of severe contamination of environmental hotspots was crucial
because drinking water was at risk. Several noble Lords this
evening

26 Feb 2003 : Column 342

have mentioned the issue of drinking water. If it is
polluted by military action, the problem will be far greater.

The United Nations Environment Programme and its sister agency,
UN Habitat, collected and analysed the consequences for the
environment and human settlements of military actions. Since
then they have worked in Albania, Macedonia and Guinea to
establish the environmental impact of refugees. They have
also worked most recently in Afghanistan to pinpoint areas of
environmental degradation. Have the UK Government asked them
about the lessons they have learned from that work? If war is
undertaken, many of the issues that have been explored would
be relevant in planning for the aftermath.

Among the issues that must be considered are pollution and other
collateral damage to the environment, such as oil spills and
chemical leaks. The effects of depleted uranium contamination
on populations that are in the area at the time, or who may
return to the land afterwards, is an issue that is hotly
debated, but it can affect populations of the area for
generations to come. It is not just a matter of the time when
the war takes place or for a few years afterwards. There is
evidence that depleted uranium use may affect generations to
come.

I also refer to the ruin of farmland by landmines and unexploded
bombs, which means that it becomes too dangerous to use, and
to land that becomes disused because of the displacement of
people, which makes feeding people more difficult. When I
visited Croatia in 1999 I saw for myself the vast fertile
valleys of abandoned farmland that stretched from the Vlebit
mountains far inland across the Krayina. I believe that
Britain has a duty to prepare military plans with
environmental consequences in mind.

It is not deemed acceptable directly to target civilian
communities. Targeting industrial facilities may produce
dangerous pollution and, as a result, nearby cities may
suffer from, for example, asbestos pollution. I ask the
Minister whether an environmental impact assessment has been
prepared. Who has the responsibility for its recommendations
being translated into a clean-up plan?

Some may say that the environmental consequences are a small
price to pay for regime change. I do not believe that to be
the case. The environmental price is paid most dearly by the
people and wildlife living in the conflict region at the time
of the conflict. It is a price that is paid for years and, in
some cases, for generations thereafter. We have a duty to
them.

9.56 p.m.

Lord Skidelsky: My Lords, I do not believe that the war against
Iraq, when it comesas I fear it willwill have
much to do with weapons of mass destruction. We already have
the instruments in place to keep Saddam Hussein and his
weapons bottled up in Baghdad indefinitely. Further measures
of disarmament can be secured without war.

On paper, the Government agree with that. The Prime Minister and
Foreign Secretary have repeatedly said that they seek to
disarm Saddam, not to overthrow

26 Feb 2003 : Column 343

him, and that can be achieved
without war if he co-operates. The Government's policy
is disarmament, not regime change.

But no one believes that that is President Bush's policy.
The US Administration are committed to regime change, come
what may. That, barring coup, assassination or the voluntary
retirement of Saddam, means war. The Prime Minister, who
courageously set out to divert the American drive towards war
into the endless complexity of UN procedure, finds himself a
passenger in a run-away car without any further influence on
the driver.

True enough, a formula has been discovered to paper over the
cracks. It might even be enough to avoid a Security Council
veto. Saddam has not fully complied with Security Council
Resolutions 687 and 1441. He is in material breach of his
obligations and must now face the consequences.

Those, I submit, are legal fictions that are designed to cover up
the drive to war. Saddam's military capacity has been
much reduced since 1991. I do not believe that anyone
disputes that. The Government have admitted as much. Their
own dossier, Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was published
last September and which was certainly not intended to
maximise Saddam's contributions to world peace, pointed
out that between 1991 and 1998, his nuclear weapons programme
was destroyed and, with it, large parts of his chemical,
biological and ballistic missile programmes. The new
generation of inspectors has not found that those programmes
have been reconstituted.

One might think that that was a record of success, not failure
and of substantial compliance, not substantial breach.
However, the Government cannot acknowledge that because it
underscores the case for keeping up the pressure and, in
fact, possibly producing more pressure for Saddam to deliver.
It does not support the case for going to war.

I listened carefully to the Prime Minister's speech
yesterday. He said that 50 per cent compliance was not good
enough; it had to be 100 per cent. Of course ideally we would
like 100 per cent, but where in the world do a government
have a 100 per cent success rate in meeting their targets? I
daresay this Government would be pleased with 50 per cent.

The only reasonable test of compliance is whether Saddam retains
or could quickly develop a capacity in present circumstances
to wage aggressive war. I stress "in present
circumstances", because the choice has never been between
destroying Saddam and leaving him free to do what he wants.
There is the middle course represented by the regime of
sanctions and coercive inspections. The Prime Minister has
said that Saddam has been given 12 years to comply and has
not done so. But the fact is that he has been bottled up in
Baghdad for 12 years.

I regard this as a killer argument. Saddam has not been good, but
he has been kept quiet. His expansionist ambitions have been
completely frustrated. Why do we believe that a system that
has achieved these results over

26 Feb 2003 : Column 344

12 years cannot keep him
trussed up for another 12 years, or as long as he lives? He
is 65, so maybe it will take 12 years.

One could argue that 9/11 has changed everything; now we face a
terrorist threat and Saddam might pass on his small supplies
of chemicals and bacteria to terrorist groups. But we need to
consider carefully what incentive he might have to do so. I
do not think that his incentive is strong; it is extremely
weak. If small amounts of these substances can do as much
damage as is claimedand I am very
scepticaldestroying government laboratories will not
do much good. Small-scale private enterprise operating on
well-tried principles, located almost anywhere in the world,
could produce as much anthrax or nerve gas as demanded by
any terrorist group.

If the looming war is not about Iraq's so-called weapons of
mass destruction, what is it that drives American policy?
That is fundamental to the whole question. I believe it is a
desire to reshape the geopolitics of the Middle East, and
beyond that, of other areas of the world, backed by the
conviction that the United States alone has the power to do
so.

This line of argument can be traced through the thinking of a
number of neo-conservative hawks associated with the Project
for the New American Century, most of whomI am talking
especially of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott
Abrams, Douglas Feith, Richard Armitage, William Bennett,
John Bolton and Richard Perleoccupy key places in the
Bush Administration or his entourage. These people were
advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein long before the
election of George W Bush and before 9/11. Those events gave
them the opportunity to carry out their plans.

But Saddam's overthrow was simply to be a first step in a
larger programme which amounts to the establishment of
long-term American rule in the Middle East, with Israel as
its junior partner. I am using my own language, but I know
enough history and enough about international relations to be
confident of decoding language that has to be kept coded if
it is not to sound too alarming.

Traces of this grand design can be found in President Bush's
"axis of evil" speech and the new strategic doctrine of
premption. But the underlying philosophy is most cogently
expressed in Robert Kagan's remarkable book Paradise and
Power. In essence, the argument is that a liberal order rests
on the foundation of armed might; that the United States is
the only power possessed of the will and force to ensure such
an order; and that therefore it must be prepared to use its
"unipolar moment" to secure the world order it wants.
That is coupled with the view that the Europeans are decadent
and therefore hopeless as partners in such a project. As
Kagan puts it,

"the Americans are from Mars and the Europeans are from
Venus";

or, as the title of his book suggests, the paradise in which the
Europeans live depends on America's willingness to use
force to deter or defeat those who lack the requisite degree
of moral maturity. That is the

26 Feb 2003 : Column 345

choice between peace and war
that we face. It is not about how many vials of poison Saddam
Hussein has or whether he is in technical breach of UN
resolutions.

I describe this neo-conservative project not to belittle it. In
some moods, I am quite attracted by it. I admire its daring,
and its aims are not ignoble. But, on balance, I find it
chilling, mainly because I do not believe that it can be made
to work, at least in a democracy. A democracy that embarks on
a career of conquest will soon cease to be a democracy. That
is the lesson that we have learnt. That is why, in the end,
we in old Europe abandoned the old imperialism. And that is
why we should pause long and think hard before sanctioning a
new imperialism.

10.6 p.m.

Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I have been away from your
Lordships' House for several weeks but I have
endeavoured to keep up to date with what has been happening.
I am horrified that we appear to be moving inexorably towards
war, despite assurances from members of the Government that
war is not inevitable. I do not believe that the present
Iraqi regime represents a threat to anyonenot even to
the countries closest to it.

Iraq suffered a crushing defeat in the first Gulf War. Since
then, there have been punitive sanctions; inspections which
were carried out extensively until 1998 have now been
resumed; and there have been regular bombing raids by
ourselves and the United States. As a result, a country which
once had one of the highest living standards in the Arab
world is now at a third-world level.

The idea that this battered country offers any threat to
ourselves or the United States is, in my view, simply absurd.
Indeed, the Americans seem to recognise that
themselveshence the rather desperate attempt to link
the regime with Al'Qaeda. There is of course no evidence
for that, as our own Government have said on more than one
occasion. The notion of a pre-emptive strike against a
country that does not threaten us or anyone else, whatever
the past history may be, is quite unacceptable. It is a cover
for aggression and a breach of the United Nations charter.

The Government have been applauded for having, it is said,
persuaded the United States to go the UN route. But it is
clear that the United States Government are interested in
that route only if the UN agrees with the US view and gives
authority for military action. The same applies to the
inspectorsthere is so much anxiety about identifying a
"smoking gun". There was palpable disappointment when,
in their last report, the inspectors did not come up with
this. Indeed, they stated categorically that there was no
evidence of a nuclear programme. What? No weapons of mass
destruction? They must be hidden somewhere. So there must be
biological or chemical weapons.

The Iraqis claim that what they once had was destroyed, and they
have offered the names of about 80 people who can attest to
that. A previous inspector has said that the material that
the Iraqis once had

26 Feb 2003 : Column 346

would now be so degraded as to be no
longer useable, even if it exists. But, in any event, why not
let the inspectors do their job and, if we have contrary
information based on intelligence, why do we not supply it to
the inspectors and let them check it out? But no, President
Bush's patience is running out, so decisions have to be
made.

Obviously the United States Administration would prefer a UN
cloak of respectability. That is necessary to silence
criticism at home, let alone in this country and throughout
Europe. But it is clear that the US will go to war, with us
tagging along behind, whether or not UN authorisation is
obtained. The war programme is based on hostilities
commencing around the middle of March. Later, the climatic
conditions may not be so favourable.

I do not believe that a moral case can be made for this war. It
will involve the deaths and injuries of many civilians. It is
likely to commence with a massive aerial attack, and that is
always destructive of civilian lives and civilian
infrastructure. Water supplies are disrupted and poisoned,
occasioning more deaths. Hospitals are unable to work because
of the destruction of power supplies. Food supplies are
disruptedin particular the Oil for Food scheme, which
enables some poorer people at least to exist, is likely to be
destroyed. The people not killed in the bombing will starve.

Millions will be made homeless, and jobless, as the factories,
homes and workplaces are destroyed. Modern warfare requires
that civilian morale is totally and brutally crushed. It is a
truly terrifying prospect for a civilian population.

We are told that there is a moral case for war, and that Saddam
Hussein is so awful a ruler that he is killing his own people
through his interpretation of the sanctions imposed by
ourselves and others. Of course, Saddam Hussein's worst
crimes were committed when he was an ally of ourselves and
the United Statesso nothing much was said about
Halabja at the time.

I find the argument about sanctions astonishing. They are
administered by a UN sanctions committee, as regards which
we, and the US, have a substantial input. Radiotherapy
equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently
blocked by the United States and ourselves, on the grounds
that they could be converted into chemical and other weapons.
Therefore Iraqi children are denied pain-killing medicines
through our actions, rather than those of the Iraqi rulers.

Meanwhile, we and the US are constantly bombing Iraq on the
pretext of protecting the no-fly zones. These are clearly
attempts to degrade Iraqi installations in advance of war.
There is no UN authority for these bombing raids. This was
recently made clear by a UN spokesperson. Basra has been
bombed repeatedlyas has northern Iraqand there
have been civilian casualties. They are acts of war, and as
such totally breach the UN charter.

However, the powerful can get away with it, and that is also the
problem with the United Nations route. Many people have said
that they would reluctantly support military action if there
were UN authorisation. However, it is clear that a lot of
arm-twisting is going on

26 Feb 2003 : Column 347

behind the scenes to try to gain
support for the US position. Countries facing economic
problems have been offered loans or aidor else there
are threats that aid would be withdrawn. In domestic politics
the purchase of votes is regarded as unacceptable. Why is it
countenanced in international affairs, when issues of life
and death are involved?

The world population has a right to be sure that the decisions
taken on its behalf are on the merits of the issues
themselvesrather than as a result of backstage
bullying and bribery. It now seems that France, Germany and
Russia have produced a plan offering an alternative to war.
This involves more inspectors, more monitoring and a longer
timescale and so forth. It is surely worthy of consideration,
particularly in view of the widespread concern that exists in
this country and throughout Europe. The Motion drafted by
ourselves and the United States is intended as a trigger for
war, despite its anodyne wording.

The Government have not convinced the British public that there
is a case for war. Myself and others question whether it is
about disarmament of Saddam Hussein at all. I was very
interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky.
I believe that there is an agenda to which the Republican
advisers around President Bush subscribe, and which they made
known before he was elected. They believe that if the United
States dominates Iraq, it will be able to reshape the Middle
East. They believe they would be stabilising one of the
world's most important oil producing regions. They think
that they would eventually produce a solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on terms which are likely to be
much more welcome to Ariel Sharon than to the Palestinians.

Most people would not want to go to war for such a
strategyso we have the farce of the dossiers about a
threat, in which many people simply do not believe. Those of
us who oppose war are often derided as appeasersor
else are told that we are anti-American. I know that there
are many Americans who share our feelings against war. It
takes some time for them to get organised and to make their
views known. But they will do so and they are already being
joined by a number of prominent United States citizens.

As to the charge of appeasement, that makes me very angry. I am
old enough to remember the Second World War. I know what it
is like to huddle in an air-raid shelter and hear the scream
of the bombs as they come downand to see people, or
what remains of them, dug out of the wreckage of their homes.
The generation who challenged Hitler's regimeand
Saddam Hussein is no Hitlerknew very well what had to
be faced. Today's armchair worriers face no such threat.
They will watch the war on television while others pay the
price.

In my experience, those who have first-hand knowledge of war are
often those most opposed to it and critical of those who want
to start another one. That was certainly true of my late
husband, a former RAF pilot with a string of medals for
bravery earned during the Second World War. I remember how we
watched the first Gulf War on television and saw the

26 Feb 2003 : Column 348

bombing
of Baghdad. I remember how he said to me, "Smart bombs,
smart bombs. Don't you believe it. We are watching
people being killed down there". And of course so we were.

My Lords, we must not let it happen again.

10.16 p.m.

Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Morgan,
made comparisons in a derogatory manner. He compared the
attitude I had at the age of 19 towards Neville Chamberlain
in 1938 with the attitude applying today to Saddam Hussein.
Of course there is no comparison between someone in charge of
an enormous, able, well-paid nation such as Germany and this
man in a small country which is slipping increasingly
backward.

One cannot ignore history. People say, "I know he's a
bad man, but", but they must take account of that.
Firmness might well have led Saddam to accept the Saudi offer
of shelter. I am afraid that the marches which took place
world-wide and the attitude of a number of politicians of
vision have strengthened his resolve to hang on. One can
understand that.

I believe that the Government and the Prime
Ministerparticularly the Prime Ministerhave
done extremely well in giving us a chance of avoiding war.
That depends on Saddam Hussein believing that we might well
go to war unless he concurs.

Those are my views and they are not the same as those held by
most members of my party. I shall say no moremerely
that my noble friend Lord Dahrendorf expressed that point of
view better than I can. I do not want a war, but firm
opposition to this evil man, situated in a very dangerous
position, will do more to avert a war than anything else.

10.18 p.m.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I support noble Lords who
today have opposed what is clearly the inexorable drive to
war. I do so not because I am a pacifist; I am not. Indeed, I
supported the campaign to regain the Falklands when at least
one member of the present Government marched in favour of
bringing troops home and ceding sovereignty to a fascist
dictator. It would be interesting to know how many members of
the Government were against our retaking the
Falklandsperhaps we ought to send them a questionnaire
to discover exactly what their attitude was.

I also supported the Gulf War in 1991 to eject Iraq from Kuwait,
because I do not believe in dictators, or anyone else,
invading other people's countries and removing their
sovereignty. Again, it would be interesting to know how many
members of the present administration were opposed to that
war and to taking back Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

I was also in favour of pursuing Saddam, taking over Baghdad and
removing the regime at that time. We failed to do so. I urged
that we should. If we had, we would not be having this
debate. So we missed the opportunity to get rid of that awful
man about whom everyone is talking. We did not do it then and
there is

26 Feb 2003 : Column 349

no reason why we should do it now, because, as many
other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky,
have said, he is contained and cannot get out of his box.

The Prime Minister's Statement yesterday referred to 4
million refugees. But of course, many of those refugees are
Shia Muslims, who were encouraged by the first Bush
Administration to rise up against the Iraqi regime. When they
did so, they were abandoned by Mr Bush I. Many of them were
killed and many of them went into exile. That is one reason
why we have so many refugees.

As many noble Lords have said, the West was also complicit in the
use of chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds. Indeed,
they supplied them and were aware that they were being used,
but did nothing. That suited them at the time because the
policy was to contain Iran. So the policy then pursued by
Saddam was agreed by the West.

What has concerned me during the past four or five months has
been the implausible and chameleon-like case for immediate
war against Iraq. First, the case was the possession of
weapons of mass destruction. Then it was that Iraq posed a
military threat to the United States and Europe, which of
course it does not. It is absurd to suggest that Saddam does;
he has neither the weapons nor the means to deliver them.
That was always absurd. Then it was because he had links with
Osama bin Laden, which the CIA itself denied. Then there was
regime change, followed, of course, by the moral duty to free
the people of Iraq from Saddam's tyranny. But
yesterday, the Prime Minister's Statement returned to
ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Saddam could
remain in powerpresumably to continue to tyrannise his
own people.

It is that incoherent message that has confused so many people
and led them to suspect the real motives of the United States
and, to some degree, of the United Kingdom. Speculation about
the real agenda ranges from grabbing Iraq's oil to
taking over the whole of the Middle East for their own
purposes.

What I have found reprehensible about the stance taken by the
United States and the United Kingdom is that their policy has
been underpinned not only by a threat of massive military
action against Iraqa country of 20 million poor
people, not Hitler's Germanybut by a threat to
the future of the United Nations. The threat is that if the
United Nations does not bow to their wishes, it will be
undermined. If it does not come to heel, the United States
will undermine its position in the world. That is not only
unacceptable but dangerous for world peace and order.

What has not yet been properly tried is real diplomacy. We used
to have diplomacy before war, but it has not been tried. Mr
Blair has been all over the world to solicit support for
belligerence. Why has not he or any other British Minister
visited Iraq to attempt to negotiate? The same goes for the
United States. The United Nations arms inspectors are just
that; they are not negotiators and should not be seen as
such.

26 Feb 2003 : Column 350

War should always be the last resort for democracies. As
Churchill said so well:

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war".

Diplomacy should not consist simply of threats. It should offer
carrots as well as sticks, in return for co-operation and
reformation, rather than humiliating a country and its
leaders. Why cannot we offer Iraq a deal that would gradually
end sanctions and no-fly zones in return for full
co-operation on weapons of mass destruction? There has
already been movement on that and moves to end military rule
and establish a democratic system.

No doubt I shall be accused of being naive, but, before we embark
on military action that is likely to kill thousands of
innocent civilians and is bound to destabilise the Middle
East further and put the United Kingdom and its citizens at
heightened risk of terrorist attack, we should seriously try
the diplomatic route. True, that will take months of patient
negotiation, but is not that what democracy is about and what
makes democracy superior to dictatorship and tyranny?

10.28 p.m.

Lord Desai: My Lords, I apologise, first of all, to my noble
friend for not being present at the start of the debate. My
flight was delayed.

Like many people, I am aware that our policy on Iraq is made up
of several strands. People often find that going into an
operation for more than one reason is somehow dishonest.
Perhaps there should be only one story. There are concerns
about weapons of mass destruction; there are possible links
with terrorism, not just Al'Qaeda but other terrorist
organisations; and there is a problem with human rights.

I have supported the Government in this matter for a long time on
the grounds of the human rights abuses by Saddam
Hussein's regime. I said that in the previous debate on
Iraq, and I say it again. I was impressed by the speech made
by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne. She
said that it was not a matter of Saddam Hussein being a
threat to us. Hitler was not a threat to us; he did not
threaten the United Kingdom. Indeed, a famous historian at
the University of East Anglia, Professor John Charmley,
argues persuasively that it was wrong of Churchill to persist
with the war with Germany and that it would have been in our
interest to settle, so that we could save the British Empire.
If we looked after only our own interests we would not fight
any tyranny which was not attacking us. That is quite right.
Why should we? What is it to us? "A distant country
about which we know little", as a famous British Prime
Minister said.

But we have to fight Iraq and Saddam Hussein because while he is
contained and trussed up, as the noble Lord, Lord Skidelski
said, he is killing his own people. If he is allowed to
survive because we do not like wars, we shall be abandoning
the people of Iraq to die silently. They will not be seen
dying on television or dramatically, but they will still be
dying, day after day, as they have been ever since Saddam
came to power.

26 Feb 2003 : Column 351

The fact that we may have supported Saddam in the past does not
mean that we should go on supporting him in the future. The
fact that we may have supplied him with weapons in the past
does not mean that we should sell him more weapons, as some
German and French companies have been doing, or that we
should allow him to buy them somewhere else, or that we
should allow him to develop them on his own. The fact that
there are other dictators and evil people in the world does
not mean that we should not go after Saddam Hussein.

Although the United States may have an ambitious plan which was
concocted long agoI do not doubt that there is such a
plan in the minds of some peopleat least in this case
we arrived at a unanimous decision of the Security Council.
As my noble friend Lady Turner saidI am glad to see
her back in her placethat resolution received
unanimous support without any bribes. As far as I am aware,
the 15 countries that voted for Resolution 1441 were not
bribed.

The history of the resolution is listed in the paper we are
discussing. Command Paper 5769 lays out clearly the entire
history. It shows how, under Resolution 687, way back in
1991, Saddam Hussein was supposed to comply within 15
daysand still people say, "Why can't we
give him more time?" The first part of the history is that he
was given seven years, between 1991 and 1998, instead of 15
days. And he threw out the inspectors in 1998; and we then
got another resolution; and now it has taken six months; and
some people may want another 11 years to go by.

But who is going to guarantee that in the meantime the people of
Iraq will not be tortured, raped, murdered, put in prison and
so on? Who will guarantee that? My colleague, Professor Mary
Kaldor, has said that she would like to have human rights
inspectors in Iraq. Of course that would be nice, but people
are not saying that. Because they do not want to see blood on
their televisions they are saying, "We will let Saddam
go on killing his own people". That is not a very moral
position to take.

People now ask why we did not go to Baghdad in 1991. My noble
friend Lord Judd asked that. I was shocked when he did so
because United Nations Resolutions 660, 678 and 687 laid down
very clearly the precise limits under which that intervention
was practised. It would not have been legal or moral to go to
Baghdad. That was clearly discussed at the time. I remember
that the then President of the United States, who had
experience of the United Nations because he was once
America's ambassador there, said that there was no
mandate to go to Baghdad, and therefore General Schwarzkopf
was called back.